


make my messes matter (make this chaos count)

by hizashii



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Cuddling, F/M, Post-Season/Series 02 AU, Sharing Body Heat, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 14:22:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6082644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hizashii/pseuds/hizashii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cold can't get to his soul when he holds her; the silence can't break her when she's hearing it by his side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	make my messes matter (make this chaos count)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [semele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/gifts).



> Tittle is from Sleeping At Last's song _Jupiter_. This was originally going to be part of the kink meme but it took an entirely different direction, which I love.
> 
> Oh, a big part of this was written while listening to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3g0d6Cgqyg). I blame Miri, but also love them. 
> 
> Dedicated to Marta and Miri. Lots of love.

Raven Reyes is a masterpiece; that is one thing he knows for sure.

She’s jagged around the edges, broken fragments that fall with her tears, tainted pain permeating her warm beauty, but a masterpiece all the same.

She stumbles when she walks, but never winces; her face is unmoving, refusing to show her pain, refusing to show any sign of weakness. He hurts for her, for the tiny millisecond where a wince distorts her features before she regains her calm, for the way her hand tends to gravitate towards her thigh as if to steady herself. He hurts for her, most nights, when he hears the faint sobs coming from her tent when he’s doing patrols.

He hurts for himself, too, for the haunting cries of the mountain chilling his bones. It’s winter, but he never feels cold until he starts remembering. Remembering is too hard, these days. Too much has happened, too many lives have been lost and too much of it rests on his shoulders.

It’s easier hurting for Raven, it makes him feel human.

.

.

.

The cold has been getting to her lately, in more ways than she’s willing to admit. Her leg hurts more than ever, a pulsing pain that ripples through her entire being, and her hands are cracking – like her composure. She trembles in the night, the blanket she was given feeling like too little for her aching body, her dry tears cold in her cheeks, the sobs caught in her throat.

Her life is now a puzzle composed of all the pieces she lost. She’s tired of the pain, both emotional and physical, governing her life, and she’s tired of pretending the opposite. She’s tired of being strong, she’s tired of pretending she doesn’t cry at night and she’s exhausted of the worried looks Bellamy gives her constantly.

She’s tired of feeling cold, of feeling dead in her own skin. She just wants to feel alive, warm, she wants to feel needed, and she wants to feel…

She wants _to feel_ , which is why she takes her flimsy blanket and goes into Bellamy’s tent. He’s not there, not yet, and she climbs into his bed and slowly wraps herself into a cocoon and waits.

She waits for hours that feel like minutes, or maybe minutes that were worth hours, until she hears the soft rustling of him coming into his tent, the sharp intake of breath when he takes her small form in, the sigh he lets out when takes out his boots. She listens, eyes closed, to the sound of his footsteps on the cold earth, to the steady way he breathes in the quiet night, to his jacket falling to the ground along with his belt.

She feels his pause, feels his eyes on her neck, feels his hesitation. He doubts himself so much, ever since the mountain, never wanting to make any decisions because he can’t trust himself to make the right ones; he has lost his sense of being, which is one of the many reasons she chose to come to his tent instead of begging Abby for another blanket. She’s tired of begging for scraps, she’s tired of having to ask for the things she wants; she just wants someone that _knows_ without asking her.

She turns around, lets her eyes carry the words she will never say, and wills him to lie down next to her. His gaze softens ever so slightly, and she thinks she might have seen the ghost of a smirk play in his lips, before he nods.

He climbs into bed slowly, giving her all the time in the world to think better of it but she never even blinks until he’s settled. He lifts his arm a bit so she can nestle into his arms; he’s warm, even though he’s been out in the cold for hours with just his jacket, but his hands are as cold as her feet.

She breathes in, feeling the scent of him deep in her, and lets her nose rest in his neck. He puts his blanket higher to cover them better, pulls her closer and puts her cold feet underneath his legs, and he never, not once, asks her anything at all. He knows.

He just _knows_ , and pulls her closer to the earth, holding her in silence.

.

.

.

He’s started to look forward to the nights, even though he used to dread them. The night’s quiet was too disheartening, his mind too loud, his dreams too dark, his bed too cold; he used to stay awake hours longer than necessary, until Kane basically kicked him to his tent, just so he could distract himself by the mindless chatter around him, the sound of Monty’s laugh making him feel light – because at least one of them could still laugh sometimes, even if briefly and only in certain company.

He rushes through the motions, giving his riffle to Monroe quickly to arrive to his tent. He’s come to crave the coldness of Raven’s hands and feet, the chill of her silent tears against his neck; he craves the silence that never feels heavy when he shares it with someone else.

When he arrives, she’s already there; her eyes are closed, as per usual, but her breathing is ragged. She always pretends she’s sleeping until he’s ready to lie next to her, as if she can’t stand to see his peel away the layers of deception that he wears all day and only wants to see him when he’s already devoid of any pretenses. He gets it; he likes her better when she’s not pretending, too.

He has stopped wearing his jeans to bed since Raven told him he was being ridiculous, and he’s a little ashamed to admit that he loves the feeling of her skin in his. It’s not sexual, but it does make him feel warm all over, as if her touch enriched his soul and chased the cold guilt away; she has never said it, but he suspects it’s the same for her, he can feel it in the way she always shifts closer to him when she thinks he’s asleep, too proud to do it while he’s wide awake. Even when she’s behind closed doors her act never breaks completely, there’s always some of it left.

He’s trying to break her walls down, but he’s afraid of her noticing and building them back up; he can’t risk scaring her away when he’s already so close. And it pains him a little to admit that his reasons might not be entirely selfless: He’d miss her, and her warmth, and the way her silence is louder than his demons.

.

.

.

She’s gotten reckless, she’s shown to many of her cards way too soon and now winter is nearly ending and her excuse is running thin. She’s too afraid to tell him she’s in it for more than just the body heat, but she’s also terrified of sleeping alone with all her nightmares and none of the comfort.

She doesn’t want to lie in bed with all her missing pieces. She wants to feel whole – and the truth is that she never will feel like that again, but she wants to try to live with her brokenness, with her missing pieces, with her hard pointy edges without feeling like she’s nothing.

Raven is not one to admit weakness, or to fall down at someone’s feet; the weaker she feels, the straighter she stands and the harder her eyes turn. It’s a second part of her now, the wall she created, and even though she tries her best she can’t tear it apart on her own.

Bellamy does, though, sometimes. Not always, and never in the same way, but he makes her open up little by little. She finds herself counting the hours until bedtime, because she loves the way their misery craves each other’s company.

She knows he’s awake even though he’s very good at acting like he’s asleep, she can feel his heartbeat pick up a little when she shifts closer to him, and sometimes he sighs if she lets her hands graze his stomach. She loves the tiny changes on their routine, that keeps altering with time; she can’t remember the last time he wore a shirt to bed, and she can’t remember what was like when she didn’t lay her head on the crook of his neck, her soft breathing in his ear.

Most important of all, she can’t remember the last time she cried at night.

.

.

.

Winter is over, the days are getting warmer and the nights are no longer inclement, Raven’s feet are no longer frozen and his hands are never cold. Their excuse is void now, with the way they have ditched both blankets, but they don’t dare to talk about it and he doesn’t want to let go.

He starts feeling, in a remote part of his soul, hope. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t the only who needed the silence; maybe Raven found calm with him too and perhaps he doesn’t have to find another excuse to keep this up.

He doesn’t remember the last time he slept alone, even though it wasn’t more than two months ago that he had no company in his bed, and that scares him. Because Earth taught him that hope is fragile, and never lasts for too long; there’s no room for dreams in the vastness of the woods, and no water can cleanse his mind from the ghosts that threaten to spill every day.

When he arrives to his tent that night, she’s sitting on the bed and looks up at him immediately. He feels unnerved, suddenly, fear taking over as he ditches his booths before going to sit next to her. The moment feels heavy with all the unspoken things between them; it feels like Raven is finally going to leave now that the cold is gone, and he will be left alone with the bad kind of silence.

Then she smiles, and lies down in bed, motioning him to do the same. He ditches his shirt but leaves the pants on, mostly so he doesn’t have to get up; when he’s settled, he turns around to look at her, and she wraps her arms around his middle and says nothing at all.

But he can hear it, in the silence that usually surrounds them, the way she’s telling him she doesn’t want to let go.

.

.

.

The next night, she’s ready to admit to herself and to him that she wants the arrangement to be more permanent. She tried to give him an out the day before, but he didn’t hesitate to come inside the fortress of her arms; she held onto him for dear life, even though he never made a motion to leave. That’s the thing about Bellamy Blake: She feels confident enough to hold on because he never tries to let go.

She’s in her usual position, this time with her eyes open, when he comes in and does the whole routine before plopping down next to her, already giving her the space to cuddle up to him. She feels herself grow soft under his touch, his warm hand in her waist; it feels intimate in a way that she hasn’t felt in years, in a way his touch didn’t feel that night they never mention.

She puts her head on his shoulder, breathes into his neck, and then just laughs a little. It feels ridiculous, because she doesn’t know why she’s laughing, but it also feels _liberating_ , like this silly laughter is unraveling a part of her that she didn’t remember existing. And it feels _right_ , when he starts chuckling too and she can’t see him but she can’t feel the way his mouth curves at the edges.

He brushes her hair back from where it has fallen on her face, and she gets a glimpse of his smirk and his eyes that are shinning and she just knows. She just wants to feel alive and warm, and needed; she just wants to feel his lips in hers, to see if his sounds are better than his silence, if his tongue is better than the quiet company, she wants to know if he’s able to just _know_ , no question asked.

She moves to look at him straight in the eye, willing him to read her mind, asking him silently to hear the words she won’t say out loud, and he does. He kisses her gently at first, just a press of his lips against hers, and then a little harder, his tongue slowly darting out to wet her lips; he touches her back from underneath her loose shirt, his fingers playing in the expanse of her spine. She feels clean in a way water doesn’t bring, she feels calmer than when the silence surrounded them.

She opens up her mouth to him, brushing her tongue to his, her hands hungry for his naked skin. He’s going slow, savoring each touch with such reverence that she’d cry if she wasn’t feeling so light, his hands leaving her naked step by step, sometimes lingering in places. She can feel his smile in each kiss, as his hands make their path downwards towards her sex, leaving a hot trail in their wake.

He works her up with his fingers, his hot breath on her neck, slowly giving her the pressure she needs but being impossibly gentle at the same time. She grabs him by the hair, as she did that other night, but it’s soft and not demanding; she wants them to take their time, she doesn’t need the rush right now – she needs the absolution. She twists a bit so his index finger gets a better angle, but she can’t keep up for long before her leg protests, but strangely it doesn’t bother her. In this place, she doesn’t feel as if her limitations define her, and in a sudden moment of clarity she realizes that her walls are down and she doesn’t care.

She’s close to the orgasm when he stops the movement of his fingers and then moves to position himself better before entering her. He does it slow, but there’s no hesitation in his motions, his finger making soft circles against her clitoris, trying to take her over the edge before he does, as if her release could save him from hellfire.

She drags his head up from where it was kissing her breasts, wanting to swallow the moans he lets out, wanting to taste his sighs in between her eager tongue. She feels alive in the moment, in the way she leaves a mark on his back with her nails, in the way his tongue curls around hers as he gently slides in and out of her, with patience and care.

He doesn’t ask anything, he just knows.

.

.

.

She’s lying face down, feeling his breathing next to her ear and his fingers tracing paths on her back. She feels strangely calm; he’s talking about something but she’s not really listening to him, her mind sluggish from sleep, her eyes barely open.

He turns to look at her, then, and laughs softly at her tired smile.

“Time to sleep,” he says, dropping a kiss on her back. He takes her into his arms until she’s lying partially on top of his chest, and he doesn’t stop caressing her back until he falls asleep.

Her warmth makes him feel human, no cold fear in his bones.


End file.
